Blogging for Profit: How to Make Money From Blog

Before you see profits from your blog, you have to start with a solid foundation. This foundation consists of good content that speaks to your target audience and a base of readers who are engaged in you and your content. While these initial steps may not bring in immediate profits, they are an essential part of the process to do blogging for profit.

Blogging for Profit Tip No 1 – Have Quality Content on Your Blog

Firstly, your blog must have high-quality content that appeals to your readers. High-quality means that the content should be well-written and error-free in addition to being informative and helpful. If a blogger posts content that has numerous spelling and grammar errors or makes deliberately untrue statements, then readers are unlikely to trust that blogger and his or her other content.

Blogging for Profit Tip No 2 – Choose the Right Niche

You should also be sure to establish your niche. Your niche is your blog’s topic and should be something that you enjoy writing about. You should also have a fair amount of knowledge of your topic or you should be willing to take the time to research and learn about it. Your niche should be broad enough that you don’t run out of things to write, but specific enough that you can reach your target audience with your content and with any advertising you choose to do.

For example, you may wish to blog about how to learn a second language. You have several different options with this topic. You could opt to blog about language learning in general and not get into the specifics of a particular language. This would be a good topic because it is broad enough to provide you with plenty of material while still being narrow enough to give your blog a good structure.

However, if you decided to write about how to learn multiple specific languages such as Chinese, French, and Russian, you are creating too broad of a blog. Your audience members will be confused because some may want to read only your posts about French while others may be looking for information about learning Chinese. In this case, it would best if you pick one language to blog about. If you really want to write about the three different languages then you could start three separate blogs instead of trying to cram too many topics into one space.

Blogging for Profit Tip No 3 – Build Readership

As you establish yourself as a blogger, you should seek to build your readership. This can be done in a variety of ways. One particularly easy way to build readership is to read other blogs and post comments on them. Thought-provoking questions or statements in the form of comments will provide readers of that blog with a brief snapshot of you and your writing and may encourage them to check out your blog. Commenting on other blogs will also help you to begin to dialogue with other blog authors and can help you to start the process of networking with others.

As you build relationships with other authors, you should also begin to write guest posts for other blogs and invite other bloggers to write guest posts on your own blog. By doing this, you can introduce yourself to an entirely new group of readers who might not have found you otherwise. You should also be sure to respond to every comment made on your own blog. By responding to comments, you will demonstrate to your readers that you care about what they have to say. This sense of caring will make them more likely to care about what you have to say in return. By doing this, you can help to turn people who occasionally read your posts to regular readers while simultaneously keeping regular readers thoroughly engaged in your content.

Blogging for Profit Tip No 4 – Conduct Giveaways

Another idea for engaging readers is put on contests, competitions or giveaways. This can draw in new readers while also generating excitement among current readers.

As you work on the above steps you should also be building an email list. This list can be used to update your readers about your latest posts, contests, products or services you are selling, events or other promotions. Putting on contests is a good way to build up this list because you could offer some sort of product such as a mug or t-shirt in exchange for a person’s email address.

You should also be sure to have a place on your blog where users can enter their email address to subscribe to your posts. As you and your blog rise in popularity, your email list may become a source of revenue because you can also sell spots for advertisers to place ads within your email newsletters. Your email list can be an important outlet for selling advertisements in addition to promoting yourself and any products or services you would like to sell.

Monetization Methods to Do Blogging for Profit

1Adsense

A common primary source of revenue for blogs is advertising. Depending on the method of advertising you prefer, you can place ads on your blog from the moment you first create it. The initial profits from these ads are likely to be minimal but can build up over time. Some common methods of advertising on blogs are AdSense, direct advertising and sponsored posts.

AdSense is offered by Google and allows you to place targeted ads on your blog. Setting up AdSense is a fairly easy process that entails setting up an AdSense account, selecting the type of advertisement you would like on your blog, and selecting where on your blog the ads should appear. Advertisers will then place bids on the space on your blog. Depending on your blog’s popularity, this could generate a fair amount of profits. Even if you only see minimal revenue from AdSense initially, as your blog becomes more popular, the profits from AdSense will increase.

A final benefit of AdSense is that Google handles all of the financial details. You as a blogger do not have to deal directly with advertisers. Instead, Google itself will auction off your ad space, collect the finances owed by the advertiser, and pay you, the blogger. The downside with AdSense is that it is pay-per-click, which means that you only see profits if your users are clicking on the ads on your blog. You will not generate revenue simply from having the ads on your blog if users are not clicking them.

There are quite a few programs that are somewhat like AdSense that bloggers might use instead. Examples of these programs include Amazon Associates, Adversal or PopCash. Before placing advertisements on your blog, you should research the different options available to you to decide what’s best for your blog and the financial goals you have for it. Each program has different requirements in order for bloggers to join. For example, Adversal requires that your blog has 50,000 views per month in order to be eligible to create an account with them. These programs also offer different payout methods, payment dates, and other benefits.

2Sell Ads Directly

Some bloggers prefer to take a more hands-on approach to advertise and sell ads directly to advertisers. This can be more profitable than AdSense because there is no middleman taking a cut from the profits the blogger earns. The downside to this is that it can be difficult to find someone who wants to advertise directly with you. One option is to place a box on your blog with a caption such as, “Your ad here”. This can communicate to an advertiser that you are seeking sponsorship directly from an advertiser. You can also create a page on your blog that provides information about advertising on your blog. This page should include statistics about the type of traffic your blog receives. Finally, you can use your social media pages to communicate that you are looking for advertisers.

While these are excellent passive methods of selling direct advertising, you will most likely need to take an assertive approach as well. You can do this by directly contacting individuals and companies and expressing to them that you are interested in selling them space on your blog for advertising. In order to begin selling direct advertising, you will need to have a well-designed and fairly popular website with a clear target audience. Advertisers are not interested in working with just any blog, so you need to make it very clear that your blog is the best possible location for them to place advertisements on. While selling direct advertising can be extremely profitable, it is typically not a good monetization method for new blogs and bloggers because they do not yet have the audience size needed for an advertiser to justify purchasing advertising space.

You can find direct advertisers through a variety of methods. Firstly, you can seek out other bloggers on forums and communicate with them about how they have found direct advertisers. These bloggers may be able to point you in the right direction – especially if your blog niches are similar. Another method of finding advertisers is to look through direct advertising marketplaces such as AdClerks or BuySellAds. There are quite a few of these marketplaces. Some marketplaces provide space for general advertising while others are focused on a specific topic such as cooking. You can also browse through blogs that have similar topics as your own or search google for companies that sell products or services that are relevant to your blog. After you find a company that seems to match your blog, you should contact them by email to discuss the possibility of selling them advertising space on your site.

A final note about having advertisements on your blog is that you should be careful not to overwhelm your site with ads. While ads can be profitable, they can cause your pages to load slowly, which may drive away readers. Too many ads on a blog can also make readers feel that your only goal is to make money by doing blogging for profit and that your posts are ingenuine. Advertisements can also be a problem because they may distract readers from your content. If a reader is clicking on an ad and leaving your blog, he or she might miss out on your blog’s content. If you choose to place advertisements on your blog, just keep in mind that you should have a healthy balance of your own content mixed in.

3Sponsored Posts

An interesting method of advertising you could also consider is sponsored posts. A sponsored post is content that you post to your blog that contains some sort of advertisement for the individual or company who is the post’s sponsor. The post sponsor will, in turn, pay you for the post. Usually, these posts contain links, information, or reviews of some type of product or service.

You as the blogger may write the post or the sponsor might provide the post to you. The post’s subject will match up closely with the topic of your blog so that it will effectively blend in with your other content. For this reason, sponsored posts are also referred to as ‘native advertising’, because the content has the same appearance as what typically appears on the blog while simultaneously functioning as an advertisement. Depending on how popular your blog is, you can earn anywhere from 50 to 750 dollars for publishing a sponsored post on your blog.

4Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing can generate fairly large profits as well. With affiliate marketing, you as the blogger would create content that recommends someone else’s product or service. You would provide links to that product or service within that content and then when one of your readers clicks that link and purchases the product or service, you earn a commission. However, first, you must find an affiliate. You can find an affiliate by joining forums related to affiliate marketing or reading affiliate marketing blogs.

The process of finding an affiliate is somewhat similar to that of finding a direct advertiser. The main difference between affiliates and direct advertisers is how their ads are created and will appear on your blog. With a direct advertiser, you will place an advertisement that they create on your blog. Whereas with an affiliate, the blogger is responsible for creating content that recommends the affiliate’s product to his or her readers and the content appears as a blog post and not as a traditional online advertisement. When searching for an affiliate, you will need to make sure that the affiliate you find sells products or services that align with the content of your blog. For example, if you blog about makeup then you should find an affiliate who sells makeup. An added bonus to affiliate marketing is that you can receive free products from your affiliate for review purposes.

Sell Your Own Product for Maximum Profits:

You can also use your blog to sell different products or services. If you can create a product or market a service that people really need or want, you will likely earn more money from selling these things that you would from advertising. While this is not to discount the value of advertising, with services or products you will be able to keep the entirety of your earnings, rather than having to share profits with advertisers.

You can sell virtual content such as ebooks, videos, courses, printables, and apps. You could also sell physical things such as books, teaching materials or merchandise such as t-shirts, mugs or jewelry. Some services you could offer include things like coaching, webinars, consulting or copywriting. You can also offer live events such as in-person seminars or workshops. Your blog’s content and niche should drive the products or services you wish to sell. For example, if your blog is about knitting you could sell knitting patterns or hand-knit items. Or if your blog’s topic is about online marketing, you could sell webinars or in-person seminars where you teach others about how to market themselves or their products using the internet.

5Sell Membership

Another avenue for doing blogging for profit stream is to sell memberships to your blog. These memberships can provide your readers with access to exclusive content that they would not otherwise receive. Before trying to sell memberships, you should make sure you have a strong reader-base. If your readers feel ambivalent toward your free content they are unlikely to be willing to purchase a membership to receive exclusive, or premium, content. However, if you have a large number of readers who really like the content you give away for free, then you will probably be able to sell memberships for a fair amount of money. An added benefit of selling memberships is that if you also wish to sell products or services, you could sell them as part of a membership package.

Conclusion:

There are many different paths to do blogging for profit. As a blogger, you should strive to find the right balance of money making methods. If you opt for too many different types you could find yourself overwhelmed. It could be very difficult to keep up with creating blog content, dealing with advertisers and affiliates, creating products to sell, and traveling to speaking events all at the same time – especially if you introduce all of these things all at once. Conversely, if you select too few monetization methods you may be putting yourself in a risky financial situation if one of your monetization methods stops bringing in profits and you rely solely on blogging for profit and money. Therefore, you should be sure to select a couple different and effective monetization methods that can help you do blogging for profit. As you expand your blog, you are always free to add additional ones.